With the brazenness that standing at the starting line of my thirty-ninth year as a classroom teacher, I have a few thoughts that I feel compelled to share.
Author Archives: tyfroth
August: Summer’s Last Stand
Tomorrow begins my 60th August (not counting the four days of my birth year), and my thoughts turn from the luxurious leaning and loafing of July to the intentioned planning and preparation for another school year and trip around the sun that the eighth month requires of me.
No Labels?
I would argue that labels of all sorts are necessary evils.
“Why Does It Always Rain on Me?!”
Even though I know that there are few emotions more worthless, disabling, and pathetic than self-pity, especially if it is allowed to become chronic, I still struggle to “avoid the snares” of that particular devil. If left unnamed and unchecked, self-pity can metastasize into full-blown depression.
Two Sanduskys/Two Americas
There remains one roadblock that continues to prevent my hometown from becoming its very best self, and that is its long-entrenched bifurcation into two Sanduskys: one White and one Black.
Tennis Anyone?
I took up tennis on a regular basis about ten years ago and have found it to be one of the most fulfilling and joy-producing activities of my adult life.
“Ain’t It Fun?”
Although the free spirit that lives in me (FYI: It’s not much.) found his encouragement liberating, it seemed to me then and still does that there are some experiences in the “real world,” many quite necessary, that just aren’t meant to be “fun.”
“Somebody That I Used to Know”
“We must choose to remember that we were all Americans before we were Democrats or Republicans, before we were pro-this or pro that, before we were red states and blue states. That is the common ground on which we can “all get along” and continue to “form a more perfect Union.” That is the proper interpretation of “America First,” not the way it is typically distorted to mean “America Only.”
“Get Out My Face!”?
I can think of very few things I would want “thrown in my face.” However, I also realize that there are many, many things thrown in my face every day that I’d really rather were not but I have little choice but to tolerate because, you know, that freedom of expression thing.
A Canary in the Catholic Coal Mine
I want to feel welcome in the church of my fathers and my upbringing, and I want to be a good Catholic if that means following the teachings of Jesus. But I’m finding myself wanting less and less to be a member of a church in which too many of its leaders and followers are more interested in turning back the clock to a time of women in veils and the Tridentine mass than meeting the needs of a modern, pluralistic, well-educated, and thinking constituency.
Ty Roth 